


There to Welcome You Home

by daydream11



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adoption, Domesticity, Fluff, M/M, Old Married Couple, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Warm Fuzzies, chosen families
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-08-20 04:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydream11/pseuds/daydream11
Summary: Crowley wants to have a baby and he wants a baby with Aziraphale. Aziraphale is going to give Crowley what he wants.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teacup-occamy (pantomyme)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantomyme/gifts).

“I want a baby.”

Aziraphale stumbled. The small table he bumped into shook ominously; a couple stray books tumbled unceremoniously from where they had been stacked. A teacup rattled on its saucer. Aziraphale coughed once, then twice, before steadying himself with a large gulp of air and a hand on the table. When he turned to face Crowley, who watched him with a soft smile on his face, only his hands clutching at his jacket betrayed his anxiety.

“You want a baby?” Aziraphale smoothed his hands down his jacket and, after an aborted move toward Crowley, straightened his body and took the seat next to him. “That’s what you said.”

“Yes,” Crowley said. “A little one.” He smiled wider. “Of my own.” 

Aziraphale stared at him. Crowley stared back, glasses off and eyes bright. Aziraphale opened his mouth a few times, unsure of exactly which question he wanted to ask first. Was this a new desire? What had prompted Crowley to want a child, and to tell Aziraphale about it? Was there something about the Them? Did this mean Crowley wasn’t so much a demon anymore? He decided on the most simple question crossing his mind:

“Why do you want a baby?”

Crowley blinked once and then closed his eyes. “We raised Warlock.”

“That’s not— yes, Crowley. We did.”

“We raised him for eleven years. Did you know that I still think of him as my godchild?”

“I.... I did not know that, no. You do?”

“I do. I miss him, even though he’s an ass.”

Aziraphale huffed a small laugh, amused despite himself. “Eleven-year-old children tend to be rude, yes. Especially when they’re spoiled.”

“That wasn’t my doing, angel. If I remember correctly, it was ‘be good to Brother Snail’ this and ‘it’s a blessing to be able to share with your friends’ that and then helping him sneak extra dessert after bedtime.” Crowley opened his eyes, smile turned wistful. “It wasn’t pretend for me. It wasn’t pretend at all.” 

“We can,” Aziraphale began. He paused, mulling it over. The thoughts felt not unlike marbles spilling over and knocking against his mind’s walls. “We can make a way to be in his life again.” 

Crowley hummed. “I’d like that.”

“And you want a baby, too?”

“And I want a baby, too.”

Aziraphale settled deeper onto the small couch. Crowley pressed against him, took Aziraphale’s soft hand in his bony one. “I loved being Warlock’s nanny,” he said quietly. “I loved waking him up in the mornings and washing him in the bath and helping him with his assignments. I loved how he never stopped talking. He was so irritating, never shut up from the time he opened his eyes to the time I put him to bed, but I loved it. I loved when he gave me cuddles. I wanted to slap him sometimes; Warlock could be such a brat, but then he would tell me I looked pretty today or bring me dandelions from the yard. I could only hug him.”

“You want that again?”

“Yes, Aziraphale. Yes, I do.”

“I don’t know quite what to say about this, Crowley.”

“You have a lot of things to say.” 

“Yes, my dear, but I am not quite certain as to what to say _first_,” Aziraphale clarified. 

“Ask them all,” Crowley said. He gave Aziraphale’s hand a squeeze. “I don’t mind.”

“All right,” Aziraphale started. Crowley turned toward him and placed his other hand on Aziraphale’s knee. 

“But I want you to know something first. Before you start.”

“Is there something wrong?”

Crowley shrugged. “Not for me, no, but perhaps for you.”

“My dear, why would there be something wrong with this, uhm, longing for me?”

Crowley leaned back, golden eyes on Aziraphale unblinking. They remained that way for one moment, then two. The corners of Crowley’s eyes crinkled. Aziraphale couldn’t quite dub his smile a smirk, but there was something mischievous about it even so. 

“Because,” Crowley said all matter of fact. “I want to have a baby with _you_.” 

\---

Aziraphale came to while Crowley was in his back office, making a ruckus with his tea service as if he hadn’t been the headmistress of many a girls’ boarding school training miniature ladies for upper-middle class and aristocratic lives. And _that_ was a memory Aziraphale hadn’t thought about in over a century. It had been in the scant decades between Crowley’s Great Sleep and World War 2, when Aziraphale knew Crowley was awake but, he could admit now, was too afraid to reach out to him. He had kept tabs, made sure Crowley was safe and whole physically if not much else. Aziraphale remembered seeing the demon at a wedding in the early 20th century, an honored guest of the blushing bride he had seen through her entire schooling from small child to young adult. They hadn’t said a word to each other, barely nodded in acknowledgement. When Aziraphale took his leave, giving the groom (the eldest son of a longtime friend’s) his best wishes and a discreet blessing, Crowley was at the family’s grand piano in the parlor entertaining the guests. He had not looked toward Aziraphale at all.

Aziraphale realized, this memory and hundreds of others flicking through his mind, that Crowley has never kept this one desire a secret. “_You can’t kill kids!_” Aziraphale simply had poor interpretation skills. 

“I’m all right, Crowley,” he called out. 

Crowley poked his head out of the door. “Are you?” 

“Crowley, I didn’t _know_. Not... not like _that_.” 

Crowley disappeared into the back room again. Silence, then: “To be fair, I didn’t tell you.”

Aziraphale scoffed. “And why not? You tell me a lot of things.”

“You weren’t ready.” 

“That never stopped you before.” It went quiet again. Properly this time — Aziraphale heard nothing from the back room at all, no china clinking or shoes shuffling. It was utterly still. Aziraphale felt it burn acidic down his throat. “Crowley, that was unkind and uncalled for.”

“You meant it, though.” Crowley finally exited the back room and came to settle on the worn couch again beside Aziraphale. “And it’s fair.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have said it.” He took the mug Crowley handed him. Not tea after all, but hot chocolate made from melted dark squares and the cheap sweet red wine he secretly loved from the nearby Tesco. It was indulgent and made the angel feel all the worse for it. 

Crowley hummed. “You said you have many questions.” He quirked an eyebrow. “You didn’t ask even one.”

“I don’t know if they’re important now.” 

“That was an exceptionally, somewhat disturbingly fast decision you made.”

“Oh, _hush_.”

“Record time!”

Aziraphale leveled not an insignificant glare. Crowley’s smug grin only seemed to grow bigger. He laughed outright when Aziraphale began to pout. 

“Stop that, angel. It’s unbecoming. I want a child of my own to raise. Of _our_ own. Not because we’re attempting to thwart the powers-that-be from telling us what to do with ourselves or because we want to keep eating sushi and driving vintage vehicles.”

“All... right...”

“You’re my best friend, angel. You’ve all truly I had these last six thousand years.”

“Yes, well I — “

“You’re my _family_.” 

Aziraphale gaped. “I’m your family.”

“You are, angel. Whether you like it or not.”

“I... like it?”

“Good! Let’s make our little family a bit bigger, mmm? Does that sound like something you would want? Something you could want?”

“With you.”

“I... yes. With me. Together.”

Aziraphale still had questions for Crowley. He has always had questions. He’s either swallowed them whole like a cup of burnt coffee, eager to get rid of the evidence and avoid giving offense, quick to pretend as if it had never existed and the bad taste didn’t linger, or else he’s lobbed his questions as accusations, wielded them like one flaming sword as if the explosions and the burns could hide his fears and uncertainties and cowardice. Crowley never stopped waiting for his answers. Crowley waited patiently until Aziraphale caught up, until he put on his big girl panties and found the nerve. 

Aziraphale decided not to ask a damn thing. Sometimes, he knew, it was better to just _do_. Sometimes the questions were irrelevant. _There is no try_, he remembered from Crowley’s mid-century days. Yes or no.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, let’s have a baby.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley bicker.

“Angel?”

“Yes, Crowley?”

“We’re not legally people.”

Aziraphale poked his head around where he sat quite undignified on the floor. The contents of old boxes and dusty filing cabinet drawers spilled around him. A fine layer of dirt, dredged up from the dark depths of his bookstore, coated the eyeglasses he had somehow kept in pristine condition since 1881. “Pardon?”

“_Pardon_,” Crowley scoffed. “We are not legally people.” Ignoring Aziraphale’s squawking, he shoved a messy pile of vintage folders aside and perched on top of the desk in the cleared spot.

“That desk is older than the United States. Get down.”

“It’s also more stable than the United States, so I will not.”

Aziraphale huffed. “Define ‘legally.’” 

“While we do exist on this planet and people are aware of our presence, we do not have any proof of such.”

“And you say this because we will soon be parenting a child, yes?”

“Angel, are you thick?”

Aziraphale frowned. “There is no need to be so rude, Crowley,” he said. “I am doing my best to help.” 

“Well, in that case, you can start by helping us establish a credible legal identity so that the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will see fit to allow us a child to adopt.” 

Aziraphale giggled. He set down the two binders in his hand and _laughed_, sounding not unlike a gaggle of schoolgirls during the lunch hour hunched over the sex articles in their first issue of _Cosmopolitan_, while Crowley gaped at him. Outraged, the demon hopped off the table only to deliver Aziraphale a swift kick in the kneecap. 

“Whatever did you do that for?” Aziraphale asked. He had stopped laughing as soon as Crowley’s foot landed, but a hiccup escaped. A snort, too. Crowley kicked him again for good measure. 

“Because you are utterly ridiculous!” He stomped toward the door, realized he had no intention of actually leaving, and stomped back to stand in front of Aziraphale. “I want to do this correctly and you are sitting there criss-cross-applesauce laughing at me!”

“Oh, my dear.” He patted the floor next to him. The Persian rug, carefully preserved and lovingly tended to since the 16th century, obligingly miracled itself cleaner. It had been a gift from a vizier of a small city in Iran, made by his own wife and daughters, a thank you for blessing the town free of the latest incarnation of the Black Plague threatening to turn the city into corpses and ash. There was a beloved copy of _One Thousand and One Nights_ shelved in a special cabinet deep inside the bookshop, too, bound in a cover the vizier’s youngest son had stitched to match the carpet. Aziraphale had been especially sore about Eden at the time, the ache excavating his corporation like graverobbers. That city had reminded him of the Garden, the way it had smelled and the way the water tasted. It was still there, still standing easy and proud, gently protected by the angel’s enduring blessing. Crowley startled him out of this train of thought with a tap on his thigh. “I was not making fun of you, Crowley.” 

“What’s with that reaction, then?” Crowley asked quite crossly. “Because it looked a lot like taking the mickey.”

“Sweetheart,” Aziraphale began. Crowley smothered the candlelight-flicker of warmth that _schwoomed_ into being at that epithet, sweet and quiet and new. “How do you think this shop has been here all this time?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “The same way my building has oh, so mysteriously never been paid for and the city has yet to evict me from it.”

“Of course you don’t pay housing tax.”

“Angel, I _invented_ housing tax. And I must say, the lot of them have taken it to the most beautiful extremes beyond I had ever hoped or imagined.” He paused. “You’ve been paying taxes?”

Aziraphale straightened up, tugging his coat back into place just so. “Give unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s,” he quipped. “It is honorable to help provide for the common welfare.”

“I know for a fact that you have been manipulating the stock markets solely to finance your flights in first class since Hong Kong was returned to China.”

Aziraphale studied his nails. He was long overdue for his twice-monthly appointment with Susanna, the lively manicurist three blocks over who had been supplying him with neighborhood gossip for the last eighteen years. “I fail to see how that matters in this instance.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Crowley muttered. “The important part is, we need to establish tip-top official identities so that we will be able to properly adopt a human.”

“You mean you don’t want to snatch one out the local hospital’s nursery?”

“Angel, please be serious.”

“We weren’t going to use our magicks to persuade a damsel in distress to leave her little one in a basket on the shop’s doorstep?”

“Angel, this is a real matter of concern!”

“Simply pluck one out of their pram when their exhausted father has turned away for a mere five seconds?”

“Aziraphale, I have absolutely no idea where you get this imagination from. It’s disturbing.”

“How about we ask one of your tenants for a chance to babysit, and we simply borrow their child forever?”

Crowley reeled back in mute horror, gaping. “That’s _barbaric_.” 

Aziraphale raised his eyebrow. “More than stealing one from a nursery?”

“Yes, because that would be merely theft, not outright betrayal of trust.”

The angel snorted. “Merely theft. _Merely_, he says.” 

“I don’t want my child — _our_ child — to grow up in a patchwork of miracles and fake identification cards.” He pursed his lips. “Hmmm, not _only_ in a patchwork of miracles and fake identification cards. We have to be reasonable.”

“Oh, of course.” 

Crowley leveled Aziraphale a flat stare. “They should be able to enroll in primary without us poking about in some underpaid administrator’s mind. They work really hard on those files. Excel might be one of my best works since the railroads.”

“I came up with the railroads, excuse you.”

“No, _I _came up with railroads and steel mills. The ingenuity! The power! The mastery! The humans on the cutting edge of _technology_.” His golden eyes turned wistful with the memory. A little kernel planted, the right materials available, a bit of necessity — they created entirely new worlds almost for the hell of it. Just because they could. “_You _made the barons unfathomably wealthy and managed to usher in the worst class inequality the modern world has ever seen to this day, and you did it all — and I quote — because you liked the parties.” 

Aziraphale crosses his arms. “And how would you know all of this? You were asleep.”

“I woke up for a brief moment and within an hour tracked you down to Pittsburgh. You were wearing the ugliest gown I’d ever seen you in and over-pouring wine for one Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and all her favorite ladies.”

“It was not ugly!”

“I returned to bed for a few more years once I saw that, let me tell you. That gown alone made my stomach hurt something fierce. You had it all under control, with the hedonism, the smog, all those barefoot kids catching tetanus in the water. I still have the commendation framed.”

“You do not.”

“I do. It’s right next to the one for formulating the Pill, which I actually earned, I’ll have you know. I got another one for Pittsburgh in the 1980s, too. That city was utter shite for a long while there, angel. You did such a good job with it.” 

Aziraphale twisted his hands. “I just wanted people to enjoy themselves a little bit more.” 

“I know, angel. There, there.”

“We worked on the Pill _together_.”

“Yes, we certainly did.” 

“I didn’t get a commendation for that!” Crowley would bet dollars to doughnuts that this was the first time it had occurred to Aziraphale to be upset about that. 

Crowley decided it was his turn to laugh, so he did. “I thought that we had all established once you left Adam and Eve with your sword that you and Heaven have very different ideas about what is considered beneficial for humanity.” 

“You weren’t even in Pittsburgh in the later part of last century,” Aziraphale complained. He poked at a swirled pattern in the rug, stitches as tight now as they had been when first woven. “We weren’t in North America at all.”

“We need to visit the General Registrar sometime soon. We are going to need the works — birth certificates, namely, but perhaps also a marriage certificate.”

“_Marriage._”

“We need to be married to adopt, Aziraphale. Do keep up.”

“That was done away with in 2002, dear,” Aziraphale said, voice pitched high and strangled. 

Crowley eyed him. He’d moved onto clutching the rug for dear life. Crowley watched fascinated as a thin sheen of sweat manifested on Aziraphale’s hairline. He had not ever seen that happen before. “Are you panicking?”

“No. Yes. _No_.”

“Two no’s versus one yes. I will take your word for it, then.” He tapped his chin. “I should get a passport, too.”

Aziraphale sighed, relieved to be on a footing he could navigate. “I have one of those.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have a passport. Multiple ones, in fact. I also have several birth certificates, the accompanying death certificates, and all of the necessary paperwork for owning this shop, too.”

Crowley couldn’t help it this time: quicker than he could reign in the reflex, he uncoiled and kicked Aziraphale in his thigh. The resulting _oof_ was well worth it. “You could have said something the moment I got to this allergen pit of a shop!”

“I tried! You weren’t listening!”

“Well, then. You can accompany me to the registrar as many times as it takes to get myself sorted, as punishment for your crimes.” 

Aziraphale leaned back into a dented filing cabinet, an impulse buy from 1993 when he had been on something of an organizing kick. It hadn’t lasted long, but he’d kept the cabinet. It now served as a makeshift-turned-permanent wine refrigerator. Humans weren’t the only ones who could be so clever. “Yes, my dear. Whatever you need.” He met Crowley’s gaze. “There is no need to look so suspicious.”

“I am always suspicious when you give in so easily.”

“There is nothing to give into, sweetheart. You want proper documentation and you want my company while acquiring it. That takes nothing from me.” 

“Oh?”

“Yes, _oh_, you wretched creature.” He watched as Crowley shifted, moved closer and slouched against him. Aziraphale took a deep breath. He loved this one so very much.

“And what about getting married?”

Aziraphale could not _stand_ him. “We will table _that_ for later.” He expected Crowley to protest, but the demon only melted further into his side. Aziraphale bit down a smile as Crowley rested his hand on Aziraphale’s stomach. He could be so sweet. 

“That means yes,” Crowley said. “Get me some wine out of this cabinet, won’t you?”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. He was _awful_. 

—

Some time later, they were still against the filing cabinet wine fridge, only with pillows miracled for cushion and coasters to protect the shop’s floors. Dust was fine, but water rings absolutely unacceptable. 

“Crowley, my dear?”

“Yes, angel?”

“You can’t kick me around the children anymore.”

“All right.”

They sat in companionable silence. The grandfather clock across the room steadily ticked the seconds past. Crowley had always enjoyed its firm, low consistency. He found it soothing. A few moments passed and his brow furrowed. Then: 

“Child_ren_? _Plural_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! It does a heart good.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale suffer the General Registrar like mere plebes.

“Hush, angel. People are starting to stare.”

Aziraphale scoffed where he sat in a cheap scuffed chair. The Office of the General Registrar was, as usual, stuffed to the brim with frazzled clerks and cranky visitors. Even with a few well-places Miracles, there was only so quickly the office could run. Printers, fax machines, and email hosts were perfectly impervious to any and all interventions. (That was not by either his or Crowley’s designs. The machines and systems were just Like That.) He could feel their collective smugness through two walls and the general haze of sweat and burnt coffee. “They wouldn’t stare,” he said, “if you would stop arguing with me.”

“It’s going to be Fell-Crowley or simply Crowley. Do you want your child to be the school yard joke?”

“Crowley-Fell is perfectly reasonable!”

“I want you to look your child in the eye when they arrive home in Grade 3 crying because the classroom terror pushed them down during gymnasium while making the forsaken ‘Look, everyone! Crowley fell!’ pun.” 

Aziraphale paused, mouth open and eyes incredulous. “That would never happen, my dear. They would be  _ our _ children.”

Crowley raised one arched eyebrow. They always appeared as if he had recently had them waxed, pristine-edged and combed just-so. “And that means what, angel? It’s not as if they would have our powers.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “You know I do not appreciate when you refer to our work as ‘powers,’” he said. “Besides, that is precisely what I mean. They will never have to worry about the town bully.” 

Crowley grinned. “All right, then. You can write out the paperwork for  _ that _ whenever Heaven or Hell come calling for suspicious use.” He reaches out for Aziraphale’s hand, who happily laced their fingers together in turn. “You big meanie.”

“Crowley-Fell.”

Crowley swore. “For fuck’s sa-  _ fine _ . Fine!”

The lady sat next to them side-eyed him none too subtly. Crowley, smart off his failed campaign to protect his future offspring from certain schoolyard doom, stuck his tongue out in her direction. He made sure it was forked and black for good measure. A crumpled packet of gum fell out of her purse as she grabbed it by a single handle to book it to the farthest free space away from him. Crowley held back a sigh. It was always disappointing when humans caved so quickly. The kids fork their tongues for fun these days. “Suburban mums,” he mumbled. 

The two sat in silence until Crowley’s name was called. With less grace and more relief than was polite, they shuffled as one to the frazzled clerk. There was an impressive heap of documents set out in front of her. “I have never once heard of anyone so young not having a birth certificate, sir.”

Crowley offered his most charming smile. “My apologies, love. Your mum dies when you’ve barely left the house and your pop doesn’t have a clue about anything at all, things get lost in the shuffle.” He enjoyed the little wrinkle that appeared between Aziraphale’s brows, knowing he was sorting through how much of that statement was barbs against both the Almighty and Morningstar himself, and how much was pure nonsense. It would keep him quiet for at least seven minutes. 

“Ain’t that always how it goes,” the clerk said. “Well then, here it is: your birth certificate, to start. You don’t need to sign it, or course, but please keep it safe this time.” 

“I’ll frame it,” Crowley said. He looked at Aziraphale — the wrinkle had eased, but his frown had deepened. The lines on his face were so very charming, Crowley thought. 

“Um, all right.” She pushes the stack toward him. “You need to sign this slip for your mother’s certificate.” Crowley had a mother now, and she had her very own birth certificate. Nanny Ashtoreth was quite the woman. With a flourish, Crowley lended his signature to the cheap paper in deep red ink. 

“And my passport? United Kingdom CitizenCard hot and steaming off of the press?”

The clerk shrugged. “You can do that all online now.” She nudged the paperwork a little closer. “This is all for your records.”

Crowley shifted in the plastic chair, aghast. “ _ Online _ ? Since when?” 

“I... I don’t know?” She said. The last curl on her head, which had stayed valiantly looped well into the workday, finally succumbed to tangled limp frizz under the demon’s dismay. “Since before I got my first passport, I guess?”

“Then what was all the waiting for?”

She shrugged. “It just takes a while, sir, digging that stuff up. Can’t be helped.” 

To Crowley’s right, Aziraphale finally rejoined him on the same plane of existence. That had been the longest seven minutes since losing track of the actual Antichrist, and unlike then, he didn’t even have Hell literally breathing down his neck to pass the time. He was trapped in the earthly purgatory that was a government office, with only two birth certificates and a handful of wasted Miracles to show for almost three hours of the day disappeared into the void of time. “Do you have anything to say, angel?”

“You were hardly ‘ _ barely out the house _ ,’” he huffed. He turned “But very well, thank you, my dear.” 

Crowley turned in his seat fully. “Is that all you have to say?”

“On either matter?”

“Yes!”

The clerk, sensing she was about to steal a luxurious two minutes of doing nothing — maybe even three, if her karma was running a surplus — wisely stayed out of it. She sneaked a small tube of lotion from the corner of her desk.  _ Luxurious _ , she repeated to herself, rubbing the cream into her hands. She thought this couple was weird as anything, but hey... they could keep bickering as long as they did so on the clock. She didn’t mind them one bit, since it wasn’t like they were fussing with her. She sneaked a glance at her desktop. 16:46 blinked back at her quite blearily. Fourteen minutes to go; only four until she was allowed to shut down her station. If she bothered to tune into the pair in front of her, she would probably conclude that they were right mutters. “Ashtoreth” wasn’t so weird a name, she had thought — it sounded Irish to her. (Aziraphale heard that, and wanted to gently correct that Ashtoreth had been one hell of a succubus back in the day, one he could even admit he missed once every other century or so. Crowley May have been the only demon he genuinely liked, but Ashtoreth has been so  _ clever _ . Aziraphale  _ loved _ clever. He let it go, though. Crowley was trying him and he was certain Crowley was being annoying on purpose.) But she’d taken a “Biblical Fact, Fiction, Legends, and Mythology” class once during her study abroad in the States, where they always had the most interesting electives available, and had she paid even a little attention to the ones at her desk, a number of things would have made her spine itch. Alas, it was officially 16:50, and even if she had thought to listen, the giddiness about her good fortune on this random Tuesday would’ve drowned them out all over again.

“Do we have everything we need?”

She grinned sweetly at the handsome redhead. “Yes, sir. I’ve made sure of it. Checked and double-checked it all.”

“One more thing, darling.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think Crowley-Fell or Fell-Crowley sounds better for a surname?”

“Crowley-Fell,” she said immediately. “Flows a bit better, eye-em-oh.” She sneezed. The clock had, against all reason, returned to 16:31, and there was a family of five glaring at her from behind the couple. She coughed, and the clock returned to 16:59. The family were gathering their own small hill of documents, preparing to leave. The younger man was in one hell of a sulk. 

“You didn’t say anything wrong, dear heart,” the older one told her. He reached over to pat her hand. “Have a lovely evening.” 

She watched as they gathered everything together, neatly squared away into a weathered leather bag, and made their way out of the office. What an interesting set, she thought.

—

“I have no need for a library card,” Aziraphale huffed.

“Neither do I, but we need a computer. Yours is far too ancient for my patience and I refuse to suffer the Apple store. The library was the reasonable choice.” 

“They have a guest log-in!” A few heads popped up to glare at him over their laptops and tablets and textbooks. Not usually put off by humans under 21, he nonetheless winced. Midterm season, the kids were always more vicious than usual this time of the year. 

“I know that, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting a visit without that librarian being awfully condescending to you.” He grinned. “Don’t you agree?”

“It has been a long time since you have been so tediously petty, my dear. It’s only a surname.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, angel.”

“Of course not,” Aziraphale said. He surreptitiously boosted one student’s laptop battery back to full. He could feel her worry prickling along his spine, along with frustration that her roommate never washed the dishes or, oh my, had the decency to keep sex off the living room couch. He wouldn’t want to go home anytime soon, either. He glanced at Crowley’s screen. “Your password is not meant to be easily guessed, darling.”

“Mind your business, angel.” He pointed to the screen. “I am spelling it ‘at, zed, exclamation point,’ la-dee-dah. Who’s going to log in? You?”

Aziraphale had his suspicions about a regular or two who coincidentally only seemed to appear whenever Crowley did, and how they even knew when he would be around in the first place he had yet to figure out, but that was another conversation for another day that he never planned on having. Crowley never did take well to interested undergraduate girls, the poor dear. They gave him anxiety. 

“Please, hurry. I would like to try that new Egyptian restaurant nearby, since we are on this side of town.” 

“Anything for you, angel,” he murmured. Aziraphale lost himself in other people’s thoughts for a little while, occupying himself with their many fusses and foibles and tiny everyday joys. Beside him, Crowley grumbled his way through the necessary applications for state identification and a British passport.

“I want a mojito,” Crowley announced. Two confirmation emails appeared in his inbox when Aziraphale’s attention returned. 

“You don’t like rum,” he reminded Crowley. “How about a nice Shiraz from the Egyptian spot?”

“Okay.” Crowley tucked his documents into Aziraphale’s inner coat pocket and his right hand into Aziraphale’s left. They walked into the early evening quiet together, Aziraphale gently leading Crowley in the direction they needed to head.

“Let’s not rename them,” Crowley said.

“Hmmm?”

“Our new children,” Crowley explained. “If they’re already named, first names, they should keep them.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes.” 

Aziraphale squeezes his hand. “Then you shall have it.”

Crowley smiled sweetly as they stepped into the restaurant. It was cozy but open, all plush red velvet and sleek wooden furniture and greenery, with moody lighting balancing the large windows and high ceilings. He liked it immediately. They were sat immediately in a hushed pocket away from a small party. “You’re only saying that because you got your way with the last names.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale admitted. “I don’t mean it any less.” The server stopped by with the Shiraz. Aziraphale poured generously into Crowley’s glass. “Let’s enjoy ourselves now.”

Crowley took a sip of the wine, and then another. “Only because this is so good.”

Aziraphale winked. “Oh, of  _ course _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for waiting! September was incredibly busy for me. This story is already outlined; it just needs writing. :)


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